Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

So I'm moving to Android but I'm pretty addicted to my iTunes star ratings and playlists / smart playlists.

You can't actually use Apple Music on Android to sync mp3s. I think I want to avoid depending on having my library in iCloud.

iSyncr looks plausible but Rocket Player is kinda ...

Help? I'm afraid.

I'm very happy using plex these days for my digital collection (most everything new these days is added in apple music though, but for my 'legacy' file collection, and for video files, plex works great; good interface, app that runs on appletv now, etc)

iSyncr is great (one of the few that isn't painfully slow with large libraries), you don't specifically need Rocket Player, it also works with any other player.

Plex is cool but extremely slow with sync and you can't play synced songs with other players.

Plex looks nice, but for some reason it doesn't stream lossless files, only MP3s. FLACs and other lossless files are transcoded into MP3s. So I'm still using Subsonic, which doesn't transcode unless you want it to.

I didn't even realize that; hopefully they'll fix that at some point but it's no dealbreaker for me. but, I'll look into subsonic as well

Plex does stream lossless audio it seems.

That thread you posted only has people talking about Flex transcoding FLACs to MP3. I have Flex on the computer, and I've tried to stream FLACs to my receiver and Bluray player, but it always transcodes them. There simply isn't an option to have it stream them without trabscoding, like there is in Subsonic.

If the payer (in this case, an Android phone) supports FLAC, it will stream FLAC lossless. If the player doesn't, then it will transcode.

That doesn't seem to be the case... My receiver and bluray player support FLAC and I can stream FLAC lossless into them via Subsonic, but I can't do that with Flex. Like I said, there simply isn't an option in Flex settings where you can turn transcoding off, it always does that automatically.

Their own support page page says so:

Direct Play Music Support

The following audio formats are usually supported for music playback:

MP3
M4A

Tip!: Other audio formats such as FLAC or ALAC will be transcoded by your Plex Media Server to be compatible.

Hmm, looks like that page is only for the Smart TV app... So maybe you can stream lossless files into an Android device, but you can't do that with networked receivers or bluray players.

can anyone recommend a good player to sync my Rockboxed Sansa Clip+ with my desktop? I've tried a few, but none are totally satisfactory, i.e.

Mediamonkey - allows me to sync the device (i.e. play and delete files and drag-and-drop to transfer) but it uses a lot of memory and it's pathetically slow at monitoring folders and adding files, which is a deal-breaker due to the size of my music library.

Foobar2000 - very efficient w/r/t managing my library but unfortunately doesn't sync with the Sansa. I can add files to the device via Folder Operations (basically just c&p-ing them into the directory) but I can't delete anything or display the contents of the device in the browser.

Musicbee - almost as fast as Foobar2000, but syncing is weird: files on the device show up as a separate music library, but files on the external SD card show up as storage and can only be managed on a folder-by-folder basis (screenshot)

Musicbee is the best of the three (and the folder display isn't the worst thing in the world) but I'm wondering if there are any better options out there.

I'm not sure on this one. I use rockboxed Clip+'s a lot but I have always been content to do manual drag and drop.

yeah, it's not a major complaint, and at least with Musicbee I can add and delete files with a single program rather than resorting to Windows Explorer. overall I'm satisfied with the ease of use, though I'm a little creeped out by the cultlike Rockbox adoration I've encountered on various forums.

I experienced a weird Itunes bug last week and figured this was the best thread for it.

For some reason the last time I updated Itunes, about a month or so ago, it decided to delete the first two songs on every album I ripped from a CD over the past two years. I have no idea how that happened. It'd be nice to know so I can avoid it for any future updates. I spent like six hours last week re-ripping all the CDs I've ripped the past few years.

avoid using itunes

(first!)

(sorry, but also true)

Lol, good advice. I would but I've spent bloody years cultivating multiple playlists. I'm married to Itunes, unfortunately.

It might be too late for this, but one option is not to use automatic library management. i.e. it doesn't put music in the iTunes folder, it just links to where the music is on your hard drive.

So our new house is not, for some time (years probably) going to have storage for more than a few hudnred CDs. Which means 1500+ in storage boxes in the loft or garage. Which probably means going digital, streaming, multi-room.

So recommend me hardware. Let's say we're starting from scratch with a hi-fi and a shitload of CDs. It'd be nice to be able to have digital radio too, and maybe stream from another source (such as vinyl) as well as files. What hardware do we need? What's simple and sounds good?

there's a separate thread for that but a fun solution (depending on your budget among other things) could be hooking up a Bluesound Vault to ethernet and the best amp/speakers you can afford and then placing stand alone Bluesound speakers in the other rooms where you want sound

http://www.bluesound.com/en-eu/products/vault-2/?cl

There's a thread here and a good overview of current options at The Wirecutter. As mentioned in the other thread I'm a big fan of Sonos. Not cheap but so easy to set up and use and seamlessly play music from multiple services/sources. You'd need a Sonos Connect to get your existing hi-fi/speakers/turntable on the network, and then Sonos speakers for whichever other rooms you want music in.

Bluesound we'd seen in our local Sevenoaks, and it looks good, but expensive. Popped in a local independent hi-fi shop and they've recommended Yamaha Musiccast + a NAS drive + a Yamaha Musiccast-enabled speakers, which works out several hundred quid cheaper than a Bluesound Vault + speaker.

Lol, good advice. I would but I've spent bloody years cultivating multiple playlists. I'm married to Itunes, unfortunately.

― Rod Steel (musicfanatic)

i'm in the same boat, and my solution is to never allow it to update. i've found that nothing good ever comes from new versions of itunes.

Can you still make purchases in the itunes store if you don't update, rush? Every year I have about two dozen albums where I only buy a few singles on each. I find it easier to buy off itunes than amazon, but I can change, I guess.

Can you still make purchases in the itunes store if you don't update, rush? Every year I have about two dozen albums where I only buy a few singles on each. I find it easier to buy off itunes than amazon, but I can change, I guess.

― Rod Steel (musicfanatic)

no clue, have never been inclined to make purchases from the itunes store or to link my account to itunes. i signed up for an itunes account when those doctor who episodes were released on itunes because i wanted to support them but then immediately deleted my account.

So we now have a Musiccast pre-amp hooked up to the livingroom hifi, a NAS drive with maybe 300 hundred albums ripped to FLAC, and a Musiccast speaker in the kitchen. It's good! But I could really do with some software to be able to edit the metadata of the FLACs once they're on the NAS drive. We use DBpoweramp to rip, and that's pretty good, but we've got some obscure stuff that I'd like to add covers to.

I use Sonos but that sort of setup, with an NAS and really good separates system is pretty much ideal (plus smaller speakers for rooms where sound quality doesn't matter as much, like the kitchen).

Yeah, really impressed with the sound in the proper hi-fi in the livingroom. We'll get a speaker for the bedroom too at some point. The kitchen speaker has replaced a B&W Zeppelin with an iPod Classic on it, so the sound's not as good, but not having to manually update an iPod via an ancient cable is a boon. The Musiccast also does Spotify etc and internet radio which is good; digital radio in rooms other than the livingroom, and not out of the TV is lovely.

i use Mp3tag (puddletag on Linux) for tagging things. It's quite a manual process, but useful for bulk tagging and lets you define macros.

And often you can just add a jpg to the directory and it'll use that.

I use Sonos but that sort of setup, with an NAS and really good separates system is pretty much ideal (plus smaller speakers for rooms where sound quality doesn't matter as much, like the kitchen).

That's possible with Sonos, isn't it?

yup - sonos connect.

nas drive > sonos connect > hi-fi amp.

its bloody wonderful.

What???? This is what potato salad looks like:

http://www.itsyummi.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/mustard-potato-salad-feat.jpg

And the Sonos Connect integrates Spotify etc as well as local files?

Why is the potato salad here?

Wrong thread. But I do eat potato salad while tagging MP3s.

i use Mp3tag (puddletag on Linux) for tagging things. It's quite a manual process, but useful for bulk tagging and lets you define macros.

― koogs, Friday, February 17, 2017 5:01 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love MP3tag and use it a lot for an album at a time, but I have a question about it -- is there a way to have it bulk process a bunch of folders, simply tagging 'Album Name' for each one to match its folder title?

Basically I've gotten really sloppy in the last couple of years since I've been using folder-based media players and I have a ton of music that's untagged where I just want the tag to match the folder name. Can MP3tag do this?

Will MP3tag edit FLACs though?

Yes

Goodo.

Tag&Rename is my editor of choice - http://www.softpointer.com/index.htm - I find it more flexible than MP3Tag.

does that work on newer Macbooks? I used to use Tag, but it's not compatible with the newer OS.

can tag & rename do the thing I was asking about?

And the Sonos Connect integrates Spotify etc as well as local files?

Yep.

i've given up control of my tagging and left it to http://beets.io/

i'd recommend it if you're comfortable with the commandline. with a bit of configuration, it now fills in the tags based upon musicbrainz, downloads the album art, moves them into my music folder structure, and alerts plex to rescan my music dir.. all with a single command: "beet im ./folder_to_import/"

also i've been bitten by the FLAC bug and have been ripping all my cds all over again.

i perversely kind of want to go through that process even though 320 bit is good enough for my aging ears

I'm honestly kind of glad I can't tell the difference between v0/320/FLAC

so glad I went with FLAC from the get-go

yeah i can't really tell the difference either, it's more of an archival ocd thing for me

as someone who likes to carry around a ton of music as a digital library (not streaming), I can't fathom needing 300mb or whatever per 40 minute album